UK Proposes Banning Computer Generated Abuse 740
peterprior writes "The UK Justice Minister is planning to outlaw computer generated images and drawings of child sex abuse. While photographs and videos of child sex abuse are already illegal, undoubtedly to protect children from being exploited by these acts, what children will be protected by this new law? If there is no actual child involved is the law merely protecting against the possibility of offenders committing future crimes against real children?"
Re:Age (Score:5, Informative)
18 U.S.C. Section 2257 Compliance
I'm sure the UK has similar laws.
Posturig politicians (Score:5, Informative)
So, while outlawing real kiddie porn is understandable to avoid children being used to produce the material, outlawing computer-generated images makes no sense at all: it won't lessen paedophiles' drives and it won't prevent "would be" paedophiles from becoming real ones. What this is is some politicians passing a think-of-the-children law to look good, probably before elections or something.
Closing loophole (Score:5, Informative)
According the news article, the motivation for the law is close a loophole in the law whereby a paedophile manipulates a illegal photography in order to make it legal:
"The government has acknowledged that paedophiles may be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons."
Re:Thought Police! (Score:5, Informative)
Most child porn laws specify "sexual activity" OR "intent to arouse".
This means that an image can both simultaneously be not child porn (a mom takes a picture of her daughter naked on the beach) and child porn (a pedo is aroused after downloading a copy of it).
You could outlaw ALL nude images and prosecute parents for pictures of kids in the bath, but i'm not sure that's a good solution.
But even if you did, then you would have to point out the several ongoing cases in the US involving clothed kids dancing or posing, which are being tried under child porn laws, despite the kid's parents having signed a waiver and agreed to the photos.
So you could outlaw that, but then, how do you determine what is child porn?
At which point does a studio portrait become porn? And considering that PRODUCING child porn carries sentences on the order of 20 years plus lifetime registration, you better make that line damn clear.
Or you could just use the world "intent" and make sure it's nice and fuzzy so you can basically prosecute anyone who makes you feel squeamish, which is what happens now.
So yes, there ARE illegal thoughts already.
Welcome to the modern world. Thanks for joining us.
Re:It's about psychology (Score:3, Informative)
But no. You're just some dumbfuck who wasted his time posting drivel to an otherwise respectable (lol) website.
At least you made some effort to pass off your crap, if only with 3 words (4 if you count the contraction differently) of "trying" in the subject: It's about psychology.
You're full of shit. Forgive me on the very-off chance that you're a PhD (tell me where so I can call them and tell them they fucked up), but I'm pursuing a degree in psychology and you
But yeah, at least you tried to qualify your baseless assertions in the subject.
You could have done worse.
Re:Here in the US, we should just stick to Obscene (Score:3, Informative)
Bad as child pornography is, what scares me a whole lot more is the way people get worked up about it. Looking at the insane hysteria the surrounds this subject, one would think that there's a child molester around every corner, and that our children are never safe. Anyone seen that South Park episode on the subject? Not far from the truth... And worse: it seems that once an accusation has been leveled, the full burden of proof falls upon the accused, both in the legal and the public domain. In this day and age, how hard is it really to plant "evidence" on someone's computer (or even unwitingly download it)?
By the way, synthetic child porn has been outlawed here in the Netherlands for some time, and recently our courts saw a first conviction and stiff sentence under this new law. Mind, this was for mere posession, not creating or traficking.
The TRUTH about pedophiles (Score:5, Informative)
There is a slightly higher rate of sexual abuse amongst incarcerated pedophiles.
The MODERN psychosocial assumption is that the abuse causes them to have reduced inhibitions, rather than "caused them to be a pedophile". There are VERY FEW accurate studies of population samples that include pedophiles who HAVE NOT been arrested for crimes.
There is substantial proof that pedophile tendencies are formed in early childhood, but the mechanism and cause is unknown. This is very similar to homosexuality, though how similar is unknown because research on non incarcerated pedophiles is pretty much career suicide for even the most tenured and respected professors (reference Dr Bruce Rind or Dr Harris Mirkin).
The few population studies that are out there suggest that somewhere between 0.5% and 1% of the male population in the US has strong pedophile tendencies, maybe half of these being exclusive pedophiles.
This means that there is likely somewhere around 1 million exclusive pedophiles in the US.
FBI statistics point out that only about 20-30% of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by exclusive pedophiles like we so like to call them. The other 70-80% is perpetrated by "situational" abusers, who are not necessarily pedophiles but choose children for reasons of power, domination, low self esteem, etc.
But even given these numbers, the concept of the average pedophile molesting 300 kids is absurd. This is a rare boundary case and is almost never played out by the statistics.
Real studies show the median number of kids a pedophile molests is 2-3. There are rare instances of hundreds, but they are extremely rare.
Real studies about child porn simply don't exist. It was 100% legal until the mid -70s in most of the Western world. Child abuse didn't drop after it was made illegal.
Since this is the only metric of its consumption that anyone has available, this seems like a logical point on which to conclude that it has little to no effect on "stimulating" child abusers to commit a crime.
But I may be entirely wrong. It would be awfully nice if this sort of ESSENTIAL research wasn't so politically charged as to be nearly suicidal to publish. The last few people who published research skirting this topic were getting weekly death threats.
sick fucks. (and i'm not talking about the pedophiles here)
And that, my friend, is the REAL truth.
I guess Ghastly's Ghastly Comic is ok, then (Score:5, Informative)
But seriously, how would one provide records to prove the the age of a drawn character?
And I'd worry more about judgments based on what it _looks_ like, in the context of a law where 17 years old is still considered paedophilia. Now I'm not saying one should look for naked 17 year old girls, just saying how it applies to a drawing. How do you prove that you had in mind a 18 year old girl, and not a 17 year old one, when you drew t.
I actually personally knew someone who looked like she was maybe 13 or 14 by the time she finished college and got married. No bloody kidding. Not only her face was that of a child, but she was really short too, so basically she was as close to a "chibi" drawing as it gets. She looked like she's probably not even in high school yet.
So what I'm saying is, basically this:
1. noone objected to her marrying and presumably having sex, unless a bright star appeared in the East again when she got pregnant
2. she could probably even star in a porn movie, if she wanted to, because proof can be provided that she's well over 18
3. but if you drew some character based on her, you're essentially fucked because it looks like you drew a child. And you can't provide any proof that the character you had in mind isn't really a kid in disguise.
And actually, depending on the country (e.g., I _think_ in UK that's the case already) probably even #2 might be illegal, because it _looks_ like fucking someone underage.
Again, I'm not arguing for allowing actual paedophilia or child porn. But when the law gets into the murky domain of what it _looks_ like, it gets very funny indeed. Especially with an age like 18 as a cutoff point. Girls get their puberty and get breasts quite a few years earlier than that, and from there it's just a very slow and gradual transition to young adult, and there's considerable variation in how fast it happens. There are people well underage which look like they're 20 already (e.g., Traci Lords didn't raise any alarm bells when she claimed to be 18 and was actually 15), and there are people who look a lot younger than they are.
When looking at a photo or movie of Traci Lords, or even interacting with her in person, pretty much noone could tell that she's 15 not 18. How do you tell if a drawing looks like 15 or 18 then? How about whether she's 17 or 18?
There are no major morphological changes that happen abruptly at 18. It's not like they sprout a tail or horns at 18, so you can look at the drawing and see if the character has them or not.
Re:Pedophiles (Score:5, Informative)
The most famous examples would be Jeanneke Pis [webshots.com] in Brussels and Mieke Stroel [lycos.nl] in Zelzate. Of the top of my head: there's also one in Ellezelle and Dubrovnik.
Re:Pedophiles (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AOC (Score:3, Informative)
A photo of a perfectly legal sex act between two 17 year olds would itself be considered paedophilia in the UK.
Mod Parent Up (Score:2, Informative)
The "Loophole" is already closed! (Score:5, Informative)
"The government has acknowledged that paedophiles may be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons."
But under the new Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, Section 69 [opsi.gov.uk]:
"References to a photograph also include- a tracing or other image, whether made by electronic or other means (of whatever nature)- which is not itself a photograph or pseudo-photograph, but which is derived from the whole or part of a photograph or pseudo-photograph (or a combination of either or both)"
So not only is it absurd to suggest that all drawings need to be criminalised because pedophiles are allegedly converting child abuse images into them, this simply isn't a loophole anymore anyway!
What if pedophiles start converting images of children into page 3 girls, will they need to be criminalised too?
The claim that this material is already illegal to sell or distribute is also bogus (they made this same false claim with the extreme porn law [slashdot.org] - on that note, expect to see "extreme" adult cartoon images made illegal in a few years). The Obscene Publications Act requires a jury to believe that the material would "deprave or corrupt" those likely to see it, but these new laws do not have such a test, instead using a dictionary definition of the word "obscene" (i.e., disgusting etc). I suspect that a jury made up of Daily Mail readers would consider plenty of Manga and Hentai to be illegal.
Also see the official announcement [justice.gov.uk], and consulation and consultation response documents [justice.gov.uk].
I fear that to the police, hentai is not merely something that may be unintentionally caught, but it is a direct intended target. In the response to the "extreme porn" law (a different law, but the comment is relevant), Greater Manchester police stated [seenoevil.org.uk] "Would like to see account of several child cartoon images e.g. Hentai material."
And note that whilst the age of consent is 16 in the UK, the age for child porn was raised to 18 in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. So sex with a 17 year old is legal, but a fantasy drawing of someone who might look 17 would be illegal!
The Register has a better write up [theregister.co.uk].
Will South Park's Red Rocket be illegal [comedycentral.com]?
Re:logical progression (Score:3, Informative)
That's just Government spin - see my other comment [slashdot.org] - the loophole is already closed in a recent law. This new proposed law will cover all drawings and cartoons of underage sexual acts, whether derived from abuse or not.
The claim that pedophiles are converting real images into cartoons (is there any evidence for that anyway? Why would they do that and not use non-abuse-derived cartoons?) may well just be scaremongering to get the press resporting this law as "Computer generated abuse" rather than "Sexual drawings of under-18s".
Re:Pedophiles (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pedophiles (Score:5, Informative)
No, there's a lot of publicity about a tiny minority of really sick people these days
Re:Pedophiles (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Thought Police! (Score:3, Informative)
Well, apparently, one thing that child pornographers do is take a picture of a child and cut-and-paste the head from that picture onto a picture of a naked body. Ergo - so the "reasoning" goes, anyone taking photographs of children in public must be a child pornographer.
There was a time when child pornography laws were about protecting children. Now they're about kowtowing to hysterical ramblings of the tabloid idiotorials
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pedophiles (Score:4, Informative)
But, one can not go into the same store and buy a statue of a naked little girl peeing. On the off chance one was able to do so, hooking it up in one's front yard would make one a pariah, and would likely get one arrested.
I wonder if there is similar double standard elsewhere.
Re:Pedophiles (Score:3, Informative)
How accurate do the drawings have to be? (eg, would a stick man with a label "14 year old naked girl" be banned?)
Do existing images still count as legal? (classical art?)
It does seem like a slippery slope despite their best intentions.
It was a similar situation when the age at which someone could appear in pornographic images changed. An example is that Sam Fox appeared topless in the Sun newspaper aged 17 (which at the time was legal) but the change in the law made posession of that newspaper paedophilia.
Re:Closing loophole (Score:1, Informative)
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 makes it a criminal offence to possess images derived from actual child abuse images. So, if you've got a child abuse photo, and you trace a picture from it, then that picture is also illegal to possess. That's the closing of the loophole, and it's already in an existing Act.
The new proposal is to do with drawings, and other artificially created images, which aren't even taken from real actual abuse. You can draw a picture entirely from your own imagination, and it'll be a crime to possess it.
When the Government - probably Maria Eagle, more specifically - says this new proposal is closing a "loophole", she's either confused about her own government's legislation (she's incompetent), or she's lying, deliberately confusing the existing legislation with the new proposal.
But it seems that the mainstream news media are just regurgitating the government's press release with this confusion included, doing the government's misinformation work for them.
It's also disgusting that the government want to try to police people's thoughts, no matter how revolting those thoughts might be.